Perfect Cover (The Squad #1)(2)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Noah continued with his blank look.

“The invitation from the Bod Squad,” I said, using the term he and his friends had adopted for the God Squad.

At the phrase Bod Squad, Noah’s eyes lit up. Before he could get any unsavory ideas, I plowed on. “You know, the whole ‘come to our secret lair in room 117’ thing.”

Noah opened his mouth and then closed it again. “You’re joking about the secret lair thing, right?” he asked a few seconds later. “Because if they did have a secret lair, that would be really hot.”

“You didn’t send it?” I asked. Noah was many things, but he wasn’t a liar, or at least he wasn’t a good one.

“Pretend to be a bunch of cheerleaders?” Noah asked.

Why did I feel like I was giving him ideas? I looked down at my watch. “Go to class,” I said finally, not wanting him to be late for fifth period. “And stay away from my underwear.”

A second later, Noah was jackrabbiting toward his next class and I was walking slowly in the general direction of my own. Personally, I wasn’t in any hurry. It had gotten to the point where Mr. Corkin and I had an understanding: I hated his class, and he hated me. It was a give-and-take relationship, and because of that, I took my time walking down the hallway and stopped at my locker again, just for the heck of it. Who cared if it had been less than a minute since I’d visited my locker last? Who cared if the bell had just rung? Delaying the inevitable was an art, and I was an artist.

31-27-15.

My combination was an anagram of a six-digit prime number. The fact that I knew that should tell you a little bit about me.

I opened the locker, briefly wondered if there were any orange Tic-Tacs left inside, and then immediately stopped thinking about freshening my breath. There, on top of a history book I hadn’t bothered to read, was another note.

Toby Klein—

You have been selected to attend a preliminary meeting with the Bayport High Cheerleading Squad! Congratulations. How does it feel?

Go Big Gold!

How in the world had they gotten another note into my locker so quickly and without my noticing? Talk about strange.

This time, the invitation was written in purple gel pen, but when I held it up to the light, some letters were a shade darker than the others, like the note’s author had traced them over twice. I quickly scanned the letters, but this time, they didn’t spell anything.

“Miss Klein? Need I even ask if you have a hall pass?”

Our vice-principal didn’t hate me nearly as much as he probably should have given my complete and utter lack of school spirit and my slight tendency toward jock-directed violence, but he was still the vice-principal.

“’Fraid not,” I said, holding up my hall-passless hands to illustrate.

“What’s this?” Mr. Jacobson’s eyes widened at the sight of the little white notecard. “You got an invitation to the Spirit Squad’s information meeting?” he asked. “That’s quite an honor.”

And you wonder why I think this school’s messed up.

“Yeah.” I took in Mr. J’s encouraging smile. “Whatever.”

“Toby,” Mr. J said, and I could feel a lecture coming on. “It’s an honor to be selected. You should go.”

I hated to break it to him, but there was no way in Hades.

“Can’t,” I said, trying to soften the blow. “I’m late for Corkin’s class, and that means detention. Darn.”

While Mr. J launched into a lecture on personal responsibility and trying to make things work, I played around with the letters in my head. YOERICUTUS?

YO RICE UTUS?

Nope.

STORY ICE UU?

Damn Us.

“Toby, are you listening to me?”

“Sort of.”

Mr. J smiled despite himself. “I think it would be good for you to get involved with some extracurriculars,” he said finally. “You should go to that meeting this afternoon. Mr. Corkin can spare you for one afternoon detention.”

Wait a second, I thought, had I just been given detention immunity? Maybe I would go to this “meeting” after all. If it meant being able to thwart Corkin’s diabolical plan of sticking me with yet another afternoon of torturous doldrums, it was totally worth it.

“Toby, go to class.” Mr. J’s words interrupted my train of thought. Obediently, I turned in the direction of the history room, and suddenly, the correct anagram of the scrambled letters fell into place.

CURIOUS YET?

I hated to admit it, but by the time I broke the news of my vice-principalian pardon to my faculty nemesis, I definitely was.

Since when did cheerleaders write in code?

CHAPTER 2

Code Word: Boobalicious

They were the most popular, had the perkiest smiles, and wore the shortest skirts. They were the best, the brightest (yeah, right), and the most boobalicious. They threw the most exclusive parties, hooked up with A-plus-list jocks, and ate lesser females for lunch. They were the varsity cheerleaders, and I was at one of their meetings.

It was official: I’d sold my soul to get out of detention.

“As you know, very few sophomores make the varsity squad.” Brooke Camden, squad captain (or, as I liked to think of her, head bitch), raked her eyes over the occupants of room 117. The other varsity cheerleaders smiled sick little grins, and Brooke continued. “Most of you tried out for the JV squad. Some of you made it, some of you didn’t, but making JV is no guarantee. We only take the best. The rest of you will be cheering for freshmen until you graduate.”

Ho-hum.

“We don’t have tryouts, we don’t care if your mom was a cheerleader at her high school, and we don’t explain our decisions.”

All hail Brooke, Queen of Cheerleaders!

I glanced around at the varsity hopefuls in the room. Half of them were on the verge of tears, one of them looked a single haughty smile away from a nervous breakdown, and a few of them, already JV cheerleaders themselves, seemed to be putting every ounce of energy they had into appearing popular, perky, and worthy of pom-poms.

Gag me. Was this really better than detention? I was starting to have my doubts.

As Brooke lectured on about the massive responsibility of representing all that was good and beautiful at Bayport High, I turned my attention to the other God Squad members in the room. As impossible as it seemed, I had to admit that, given the fact that the invitation had proved to be legit, there was at least a decent chance that one of them had encoded the secret messages into my notes.